Spoiled Remains
by Teekoness
Summary: Stephanie Brown is dead and yet she remains.


Foreword: (Please ignore if you want to, it won't hurt your understanding of the story.)

Blame the writer not the character is my approach to the media. This is generally sum up my feelings about the characterization of Stephanie Brown, the Spoiler, who has amassed a lot of fan hatred the past few years, especially after Chuck Dixon stopped writing her.

In my mind, Steph remains to this day as one of the most under appreciated characters in the Batman universe. She wasn't the greatest at anything. She wasn't the greatest planner, fighter, or detective. Her home life wasn't the greatest either. She wasn't rich, well-off or really middle-class. Her father was a wannabe-Riddler and her mother popped pills and not for medical reasons.

She also wasn't the greatest moper. She never asked for pity nor wanted it.

In a world of superhero scientist, billionaires and detectives, seeing a character who had a lot to learn could be fascinating and in the right issues, she was. Nonetheless, her characterization went downhill somewhere along the line. She became Robin's jealous girlfriend who was determined to find out his real identity against his wishes. She seemed incapable of learning and always disobeying reasonable orders.

Her actions aren't what I object to. I'll buy (even if I don't like it) Batman marrying Poison Ivy, IF they can convince me of it by giving a good story leading up the event. Even a badly written story that depicts a character's motivation is better than none, something they didn't do with Steph.

Yes, older fans know about her home life or her boyfriend that got her pregnant and ran for the hills, but that's not enough. A good writer might give a little hint how this would affect her, which they didn't really do.

Instead, they turned Stephanie into an unsympathetic jerk, while I held up hope that it would all turn out right in the end. Instead her character ended up as flat as a pancake and eventually dead.

In War Games, Stephanie set up a meeting between gang leaders in an attempt to gain control of them and impress Batman. This is out of character for her, despite her recent poor characterization. She's not that chronically stupid. I'm not sure anyone is.

Eventually this meeting lead to a gang war that got her killed.

My only bit of relief on the issue was she had a half-decent death scene, but still, I was frustrated. Stephanie died with DC getting only a fraction of her potential out of her as well as turning her into an idiot.

Still, any character's death can lead to interesting side-effects and despite my annoyance, I was intrigued. _What now?_ I wondered. So I imagined a couple things. Then imagining wasn't enough, I needed to see them down on paper (or computer screen). So along came this story.

Now on with the story.

Toodles,

Laura

* * *

"_Dear Diary, I'm DEAD."_

_- Spoiler_

Robin fell. The wind rushed through his hair, while his cape whipped out behind him like wings. It flapped uselessly against the air, a flurry of yellow and black, as he was pulled ruthlessly downwards by the cruel grip of gravity.

His body dropped downwards, moving like an Olympic diver, purposely, but if one looked into his face the person that was Timothy Drake would be strangely absent. His body seemed devoid of spirit Perhaps merely an effect the white lenses of his mask or perhaps it was something more.

Below, Gotham was more quiet than normal. For the first time that season, winter's icy breath had touched the city. Though snow had yet to fall, the temperature had plummeted the last few days, frost decorated more than one window, while puddles were covered with a crisp sheen of ice. In response the parasites and predators of the crime-ridden city had retreated to their warm, blood-stained burrows.

Still the sounds of traffic were as strong as ever and as Robin fell, they rose up to a deafening forte hailing a potentially deadly climax as he toppled down and down.

In a lightning fast movement, his arm lashed out from beneath the folds of his cape, revealing a grappling gun tipped with a wicked talon-like hook in his hand. Aiming, almost lazily, the hook was launched towards the roof of an office building and securing itself on its ledge bringing a long D-Cel cable with it. Grabbing the grappling gun firmly with both hands, he was pulled up and away from the streets below and swung towards the building.

He pressed another thing on the launcher and the cable was drawn in, increasing his speed until he seemed to _soar_ at the office. Bringing his legs up, he hit the building at a slant, and using the remaining momentum and the cable, he literally ran the couple feet up to the roof-top.

Pausing for a moment to retrieve the grappling hook, he gazed down at lights of the cars below as they flashed in and out of his vision, dizzyingly, like a strobe light trying to pound its rhythm into the young man's mind.

He ignored it. Tonight his evening dance, was not to the beat of Gotham's streets however well he knew it.

He ran along the roof. A black cloth lightly rubbed his torso through the crimson fabric covering it as the arm it was tied to went back and forth.

He reached the end of the roof quickly, his right stepping off the edge and threw himself into the open air once more.

Tonight, he danced to a funeral march.

* * *

Stephanie was dead. A fact that Batgirl, Cassandra Cain, was still trying to comprehend.

Death was nothing new to her. She met it every night, watched as others surrendered to its infinitely cold grasp, a touch that she had once experienced and had once…one time too many had been the one to deal it out.

That memory of death was still all too fresh. Sometimes when she looked at her hand, she could still see the blood clinging to her fingers and the flesh from the man's throat underneath her nails, pressed against her own.

These memories of death were almost easy acknowledge, simply because they were so gruesome, so real that they couldn't be ignored. They burned into to her mind.

It was different with the Spoiler. Batgirl didn't know why. Stephanie had been her friend. Her absence should've been a gaping hole in her life. Instead, not much seemed to change, Cassandra fought the same kinds of people, saved the same kinds of men and women, and generally did the same things.

She stood on the top of an apartment building surrounded by those who seemed affected by the Stephanie's death.

Dinah Lance stood to the side. She occasionally glanced at Batgirl, her expression sympathetic. The last few days she had asked to patrol with her.

Huntress shifted from foot to foot, her jaw grinding slightly. Her back muscles were tensed, while she unconsciously rubbed the bolt-launcher on her right wrist. Meanwhile, her eyes looked intensely at her companions, flashing from one to another, never settling too long.

Batman seemed more withdrawn than normal. He stood at the end of the roof and gazed down at his city. He was almost impossible to read, even to someone of Batgirl's talents. She detected some guilt and anger, but for the most part he completely hid his emotions.

All of them were affected, so why wasn't she? Why wasn't she acting like should? Why was she obsessing about this instead of mourning for Steph?

Why couldn't she act normal?

Instead of feeling like crying for her friend, she wanted to hit Stephanie. Hard.

Hit her and hit her for being such an idiot. For causing the gang wars that led to her death. For dying while trying to stop the gang wars.

Why did her friend have to be such an idiot? Why did she still care about Stephanie? Stephanie was dead, nothing would change that. Stephanie's death was her own fault, so why should she care at all?

Why? Why? Why? Why? Why?

Batgirl wanted to hit Stephanie very hard.

But Stephanie was dead, her remains burnt to a pile of ashes. There was nothing to hit.

The soft slap of boots on cement that heralded Robin's arrival reached Batgirl's ears and she turned her dark lenses in the direction of the Boy Wonder, taking in his almost awkward posture. He seemed shy, like he wasn't quite sure how to handle the situation.

As the other vigilantes faced him, he removed four black bands from his belt.

"Oracle thought these might be appropriate," he said, stroking the fabric of the bands with his thumb for a couple seconds and glancing at the one already attached to his upper arm.

Wordlessly, they each took one and secured them to the arms. Then, following some unspoken signal they swung off the apartment into the suburbs behind it.

The houses on the outskirts of Gotham were not the best kept, most needed paint jobs and they're gardens were full of weeds. Many houses were still damaged from the earthquake that created No Man's Land.

The house they were headed for was in better repair. Its lawn badly needed mowing, but other than that it seemed like a good little house. The living room window was dark but through her nightvision, Batgirl could be made out the form of a woman.

* * *

Agnes Crystal Bellinger-Brown lay on the couch, her head on its cushions. The cushions were cheap, and so insanely soft that half her face was sunken into their depths. One eye was completely covered while the other stared at the beer bottles adorning the coffee table, trying not to focus on the Christmas tree behind it.

Stephanie had adored decorating the tree each winter. Last year she had a bad flu and despite her constant sniffling and a high temperature, she had dragged herself out of bed, then spent an hour untangling the lights and then another two hours decorating the tree until it was "perfect." It didn't matter that the plastic tree they used every year had a huge bare spot, Stephanie still had considered it perfect. She had loved doing it so much that she had insisted that they take the tree out and adorn it a month before Christmas eve, just a few days before she had…

Agnes' chest seized up. Her hands shook violently and she clutched them closely to her chest.

Her baby was gone. Ohgodohgodohgod, her baby was really gone.

She remembered the last few days in vivid colour. The moment when the mortician had arrived. His clipped, false-sympathetic voice as he had told her that her daughter was dead. The moment when the police had told her that they couldn't find the killer.

The moment when she saw Stephanie's body in the soft-lighting of the morgue.

Agnes was a nurse. She had seen dead bodies before and knew the look. Nonetheless, some crazy part of herself thought if she merely shook Stephanie hard enough, she'd open then roll her eyes and complain about being woken up too early. Maybe make a joke about her paranoid mother jumping to weird conclusions.

Agnes had touched her daughter's cheek, gently caressing it as she had when she had first held Stephanie in her arms. The flesh had been cold and stiff, undeniably dead. Agnes had traced her child's face, stroking the cuts and bruises that peppered it. Stephanie was still beautiful in death. Agnes couldn't bare the thought of her being buried. The idea of her little girl deep in the ground, buried under tons of dirt far from the sky, while her remains become rotten and maggots grew in her flesh had disturbed Agnes. The picture had been too vivid, so she had ordered Stephanie's body to be cremated.

This too bothered Agnes. The urn containing the ashes was in the house, and was, for some inexplicable reason, even to herself, been placed in her daughters room until further notice.

It had been over a week now and the pain was still with her. When Arthur had died it had been hard enough. Despite herself she had loved the man. The anger and betrayal he had caused her had softened the blow of his death, but her child's death was like a knife through the heart only worse. The pain wouldn't go away. It was her constant companion, torturing her mentally and physically.

She wanted it to go away and at the same time wanted to hold it close.

She stared with her one uncovered eye at the beer bottles. She'd been looking at them for hours, but they remained unopened. They must have been room temperature now. Probably tasted lousy. Not that she cared much.

She sat herself up, her muscles protesting, and reached for one. Stephanie had hated when she'd drink. It had been something she'd do whenever the doctors had refused to give her painkillers. The little pills had given her relief from her problems with Arthur and alcohol had been a poor, but sufficient substitute.

Agnes had tried to stop many times, watching the frustration and betrayal touch her daughter's face each time she returned to the habit. So often had it happened that it seemed hopeless, until recently. She'd been away from the drugs for six months and finally the battle had seemed over.

Until now.

What did it matter now? Stephanie was gone. There'd be no more looks of disappointment. She had hidden her use of alcohol and drugs from her co-workers and friends before. She could do it again. No one would know.

She _needed_ this. She needed to feel relief for one moment. Stephanie would've understood. Daily problems were one thing. This was different.

Her hand wrapped around a bottle's throat, her thumb popping the cap off. She raised the beer to her lips and –

"Stop." The bottle hit the floor, shattering, its dark-brown contents spilling onto the carpet.

The voice was soft but firm, and was female and youthful-sounding and for one exhilarating second she thought it was Stephanie. She whirled to face it, her breathing ragged.

"You," she whispered.

There _they _stood. She knew of them and in some cases even seen them. After all, both Arthur and Stephanie had dealt with them on more than one occasion. They were of the night. Five silent wraths clad in the shadows.

One in particular caught her eye. He towered above the rest. The ears of his mask that reached upward were like the horns of a devil. He was the animal, the monster, the Pied Piper that had led her child away from her to join him in his dark realm.

He was looking at her, those empty, white lenses hid any expression he might have had.

"I'm sorry," he said, softly. Softer than a feather. Softer than her baby's cheek when she'd first held her.

For the first time, the pain was gone replaced by something much more bearable. Her body was overflowing with energy. Her limbs shook with it. Her face was contorted into strange expression.

She hated him.

She tore forward and with all her strength punched him.

He didn't try to block her or move in anyway. He took the blow full on, not even moving his head as her fist collided with it.

She stepped back, panting heavily and stared at him. Both eyes locked onto his face. Still, he didn't move. Only the slight purple spreading on his face that indicated the beginnings of a bruise distinguished him from a statue.

"I'm sorry," he said again.

For a moment it seemed as if there was no one else there, just her and _him_.

_You should've protected her. You should've made her stop. You should've told me. You should've done _something_. Anything, _she wordlessly raged at him, but instead she only whispered "It's your fault."

He didn't deny.

She closed her eyes, and caught her breath. Something hot and moist burned inside her lids, and she whispered "It's my fault."

Then she opened her eyes again to an empty room except for herself, a bunch of beer bottles and a Christmas tree that glowed much too bright.


End file.
